ble phenomena in Antipodean formulation are taken to "caus[e] certain neural processes" (269).
In effect, Rorty is articulating the Antipodean experience of reality as a metaphysics of neuroscience. Equally, all being, not just the thinking organism's experience of being, is formulated in neurophysical terms. This is an ontology in which all living beings are neurophysical organisms. In Terran terms, the Antipodean cosmology could be said to perceive the found universe fundamentally as an object that causes organismic neural states. The reason that this is problematic for Terran philosophical discourse is that it is difficult not to conclude from Antipodean language that reported Antipodean neural processes become coeval with explained neural processes. These processes are opaque to formulations that achieve significance because they lack materiality. They are not opaque to formulations that distinguish between appearance and reality as far as the objects of an organism's neural processing is concerned, as the understanding of the difference between an elephant and a mastodon indicates. However, Antipodeans cannot imagine "seeming to see indigo and failing to seem to be in state C-692." Even though they can imagine being mistaken in general, and even though they can describe a certain neural state (T-435) comparable to having their C-fibers stimulated (i.e., in Terran terms, pain), they cannot imagine "being mistaken about whether their C-fibers seem[] to be stimulated" (270; emphasis added). The distinction between what seems and what is, is lost on the Antipodeans, who may be mistaken about what is but who do not see any significance in holding a belief about what is or seems (271). It is as if the Antipodeans do not conceptualize belief about truth because of the way they conceptualize (neurally process) reality/being.
The point that Rorty is making in telling the story of the Antipodeans is not necessarily to argue that their...